One of the pillars of the contemporary Republican Party has been racism.
They have made great efforts to mask it with euphemisms so that they can use code words to let anti-black voters know what side they're on and at the same time piously deny that they are being racist.
Their code words have been that they are for 'states rights,' 'law and order,' 'welfare reform,' and against 'affirmative action,' 'quotas,' 'reverse discrimination.' 'tax and spend liberals,' 'activist judges,' and 'busing.'
Now they've won the Supreme Court. Their man-- who is, unfortunately, our Chief Justice - has declared that the state has no 'compelling interest' in creating diversity. Therefore racial integration can't be required.
Out across the land, there has been a great, but very quiet, sigh of relief.
Among the first to come out of the closet, into the new sunshine where it's at long last safe to say that integration is not a good thing, is the New York Times columnist, David Brooks.
His column today is called 'The End of Integration.'
He says that he's sad about it. But the column is dedicated to selling us on giving it up.
He claims that it's dead already. We just need to recognize, and accept, that reality.
Actually, it's worse than that. According to Brooks, we should never have tried in the first place. He says, "it could be the dream of integration itself is the problem. It could be that it was like the dream of early communism -" a nice dream, but not fit for the way people really are."
See that, integration is evil, like communism. Anyone who believed in it was foolishly naïve. Thank God, we're finally getting over such mistakes.
It's as if there's no memory.
A significant portion of this country practiced apartheid, under our own American name, legally enforced segregation.
I grew up in New York. A place that thought of itself as 'liberal' in the extreme, and that thought of segregation as a particularly Southern disease.
That was not true.
The rest of the country also practiced segregation. They didn't need laws to do it, yet the races were effectively kept almost as separate and black people were kept out of the good schools, the good jobs, the good professions and the good places to live.
It's the idiotic, ongoing boogeyman about Republicans being racists. That is utter crap. People don't buy that anymore. That's like saying Democrats are jew-haters because a tiny but loud handful of radical lefty thugs keep screaming that Israel can do no right and the Palestinians can do no wrong. Garbage.
by
Scott (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 406 comments)
on Friday, July 6, 2007 at 9:46:51 PM
1. Libs invented "code words" in order to accuse people of saying things they didn't actually say. It's a nifty little tactic, though, since there's really no defense.
2. You say, "...it is impossible to imagine that we return to all white universities..." and yet all-black universities are a good thing. I wonder why?
3. I have never encountered a rational explanation of how practicing racial discrimination in the name of "race-based affirmative action" will help to end racial discrimination. Perhaps you will care to address that subject at some future time.
4. How much longer would it take? It's been 40+ years since the Civil Rights Act and you wished for "a generation or two." A generation is something like 20 to 30 years so It seems you have had your wish. How many more years of racial discrimination will it take to do away with racial discrimination?
by
Joe Reeser (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 28 comments)
on Saturday, July 7, 2007 at 5:34:21 PM
could you cite some? Or did you mean that libs invented the concept? Lee Atwater, the great Republican campaign stratgist (he did Bush v. Dukakis) was very explicit about the use of 'code words' by himself and the party he worked for. He even traced the history of how they morphed. Feel free to search the quotation out.
Code words work best when there is a kernel of a real issue there so the user, and the listener, can convince themselves that they really care about 'states rights' not about keeping segregation. Busing was a good one, because busing had real problems, but I while I saw a lot of people aroused against busing, I never heard of a single one of them say that there was a real problem, and though busing was a bad solution, here are some good alternatives.
in order to accuse people of saying things they didn't actually say. It's a nifty little tactic, though, since there's really no defense.
There are lots of defenses. People say, adamantly, that they are really concerned with 'states rights.'
2. You say, "...it is impossible to imagine that we return to all white universities..." and yet all-black universities are a good thing. I wonder why?
Who said all black universities are a good thing?
Let's presume they are. And all Christian, all Jewish, all Muslim, all girls, all boys, all Puerto Rican, all Italian-American, etc.
The difference is that when the path, or the easiest paths, to power and prosperity are through certain institutions keeping people out of them is keeping them from full participation in society.
Whereas allowing people to participate in seperate minority experiences where they think there's a value and are willing to sacrifice full access to power and prosperity, is another matter.
If all white universities will help disqualify their students from the best jobs and best connections, go for it!
By the way, are you eager for a return to all white universities? Pro-sports teams?
3. I have never encountered a rational explanation of how practicing racial discrimination in the name of "race-based affirmative action" will help to end racial discrimination. Perhaps you will care to address that subject at some future time.
I thought I addressed it in the article. That's most of what the article is about. Affirmative action has helped change a completely segregated society into a partially integrated one, it has taken a portion of a fully excluded class and allowed them good jobs, good housing, etc.
4. How much longer would it take? It's been 40+ years since the Civil Rights Act and you wished for "a generation or two." A generation is something like 20 to 30 years so It seems you have had your wish. How many more years of racial discrimination will it take to do away with racial discrimination?
I don't know how much longer it will take. It is a difficult and complicated problem, as I mentioned in the article.
What about white affirmative action? Does that not bother you? Special admissions, special contacts, special connections, some formally recognized (as preference for children of alumni in univeristy admissions, which, after a couple of centures of segregation have to be almost all white) and many more a matter of informal practice.
I just had Asian-American write me and mention the Asian complaint that affirmative action for whites does more to harm qualified Asian college applicants than affirmative action for blacks.
by
larry beinhart (31 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 1 comments)
on Saturday, July 7, 2007 at 6:19:27 PM
